Of Love and Empty Casket
by toomuchchampagne
Summary: This man, this stranger with secrets wearing her brother's skin like a disguise, was not her Ollie. She can feel it. So Thea investigates. What will she make of the answers she finds? Warning : Queencest.


**Disclaimer** : I own nothing. Some very lucky people at the CW own Arrow, and the original Green Arrow comics belong to DC Comic.

**A/N : This is Queencest, don't like don't read etc. **

**29/10 : I re-uploaded it, with a slight modification to clarify the ending.  
**

Ask and you shall receive, dear readers. So here for you is a second O/T one-shot, a little more explicit but not much. Hope you'll enjoy it anyway!

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For months she awaited his return. Soon, months became years. Years of nightmares filled with visions of his rotting body, always scared that the next phone call would be about someone fishing out his skeleton from the greedy Ocean. Years of those damned empty graves taunting her. Haunting her.

But now he's here. And, after the first wave of ecstasy induced by his return has worn off, she can't quite believe him yet.

It is indeed Oliver Queen, and he is back. But the man they found on this island isn't her brother. This man, this stranger has little in common with the one her twelve-year-old self knew.

They look a lot a like, of course. He's still as handsome as ever. Even more. There is an animal attractiveness about him now, something wild and raw that was never there before. Her brother was misguided but sweet—nothing like this raw, primal charisma.

And since he's been back, it's missing. This special sweetness of his.

Some parts of her brother stayed on this damned island, she guesses. But to her it's starting to feel like he never came back.

He doesn't sing or laugh anymore. He tries, he pretends. But she won't be duped.

She watches him, looking for traces of the man who was once her brother on his features.

All she sees is a stranger with a secret wearing her brother's skin like a disguise.

x

He's a shell. He knows it. But since he's been back, it's his old life that feels empty. Did he really ever lived in that house? Did he really use to sleep every night in that gigantic bed? It all feels stupid and pointless, so far away from the realities of life. So far away from the island.

He came back from this place in pieces, and it seems that they don't all fit back into his old life. It's funny how he keeps referring to it as 'his old life'. He's been back for almost a month now, and every thing still feels so strange. Estranged.

Like Thea.

At first, he thought she was just like his old self, but she's not. He just doesn't get her. She's all confusing with her too-beautiful eyes twirling with emotions he doesn't understand. Yet for some reason he craves her presence, and the feel of those big bright eyes studying him intently.

He thinks maybe she's on to him and his secret vigilante persona. But if she suspects anything, she never betrays it.

He doesn't get her, what game is she playing? He remembers how she used to never hold anything back from him, how she used to come running to him to tell him all her secret with this big happy smile on her lips and bright pink cheeks. It feels like it was in another life.

How she has changed since that time, he reflects as her eyes are on him once more across the dinner table. The conversation is tense and polite, Thea barely speaks at all. Her attention is somewhere else, on his mouth apparently.

"What?" he asks, tired of her intense gaze.

She looks so shocked by his quiet outburst that for a second he thinks she's going to look down and blush, like the school-girl she still is—a fact he has trouble remembering whenever his eyes wander too much on her treacherous body—but she doesn't.

Instead she just shakes her head and looks away. He misses the feel of her eyes on his skin already.

x

She follows him one night. He lets her, curious of what she's up to. He likes the idea of her following him. It's almost like old time, her chasing him around. Yet it doesn't feel the same. He's neither amused or annoyed. It's a new kind of feel. A thrill, different from everything else he's experienced although not entirely foreign.

So he lets her follow him, he leads her even, high on her silent presence behind him. Until they're alone in his lair.

"Stalker much?"

She almost jumps out of her skin at the sound of his voice, her mind too lost in processing an infinite string of theories about what the hell this all means, and none of them can be right. Because if there is any truth to them her Ollie, her sweet goofy Ollie is dead. Replaced by an insane cold-blooded killer with a never ending supply of lethal arrows.

Spending five years on a deserted island will do that to people, she muses.

"I said 'stalker much'", he says. His low voice, sending shivers down her spine, surprises her by its unexpected closeness. It's hard to tell in the dark.

"What? Cat got your tongue, Speedy?"

He's right behind her now, she realizes. She can barely move, overwhelmed as she is by conflicting emotions.

"Are you scared?"

"No," she says without blinking, and it's true.

She turns around in a swift movement to meet his gaze. He is so close. If she leaned just a little bit, her head would fit right in the crook of his neck. For a fleeting instant, she wonders what he would smell like.

He didn't know what he was longing for until he met the blazing fire in her eyes. It's beautiful. Her all face is transform from pretty to sublime.

"You're him," she says and her tone is both accusation and wonder, "you're the arrow guy. Robin hoodie. It's you."

He smiles at her reaction, a smug cocky smile that seems to say 'still not scared?'.

"You're not even going to try to deny it?" she asks, stunned.

"Why bother?" he says, his smile not leaving his lips as he shrugs.

"Why?"

It's the one word he doesn't want to face.

"Why are you here?" he retorts.

"I asked first."

"Fine. It's a long story. You?"

It's her time to shrug. "I'm not even sure," she says.

"Liar. There's something going on with you. It has been for a while. Did you think you were subtle, staring at me like a love-struck school-girl, and-"

He stops when he realizes that, this time, she is blushing. The darkness hides from him the deliciously red color of her face, but he can still tell.

"Oh, I'm sorry did I hit a nerve?" he says. The thrill is back, this time a thousand times more powerful.

"Shut up," she says.

"That's a really mature comeback, Speedy."

"Stop it. I knew something was wrong, alright? That's why I followed you. Since you've been back, you're different. You're just not the same, I could feel it. And I was right. You're not my brother, you're him," she said, pointing to the the green costume hanging on the wall.

Maybe he should have felt offended, but it just made perfect sense to him.

"Now what? Are you happy?" he growls, threatening.

"I-I-" she stammers, not understanding what he's doing.

"How does it feel to have finally discovered my secret?" he asks, the rough whisper of his voice so close to her ear.

"Like I understand you again," she says, the relief evident in her voice.

He blinks.

"Really?" he asks, wickedly. "Are you sure about that?"

"Yes," she answers, stubborn as ever when a pair of fresh lips crash into hers.

To his surprise, she kisses him back. The joke's on him, he thinks before losing himself into the kiss.

None of it feels like it should, yet it feels immensely right. Her lips are needy, urgent against his and he can feel his own desire burning up.

Her hands find their way to his short hair, too short to grasp, so her fingers dig into his neck and back. The contact is driving him crazy, he snakes his arms around her waist and tries to bring her impossibly closer. She feels good here against him, he thinks as he kisses the side of her jaw, then down her throat.

Her lips, still burning from the contact of his own, continuously form his name like a silent prayer. She needs more, his butterfly kisses on the tender flesh of her throat are maddening. She puts her hand softly on his chest, where she knows an especially painful-looking scar is hiding. He freezes.

"It's alright," she says, rubbing tiny circles up and down his chest.

"Thea-"

"Shh, don't stop, please."

His eyes meet hers, and as he sees the resolve in them he gets a glimpse of something else. Something needy and fucked up. Something damaged, just like him, and he wonders if she wouldn't benefit from wearing a costume like he does, before losing his mind once again in the perfect lines of her body.

He sweeps her off the floor in his muscle-hard arms, and so pressed up against him she can feel another masculine hardness.

When he lies her down on an operating table in the middle of the hangar, she's ready for him. But she doesn't expect the sweetness that follows.

It's a small miracle, a rare moment of perfection in a fucked up world as their lips and bodies join.

To him, it feels like love. For her, it's like finally opening an empty casket. And letting go of all the anger, fear, guilt and resentment she had buried into it in the place of her brother's body.

And now it's just them.

They're free.

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So what did you think? I'm not really good at writing sexy stuff so sorry about that.

Review please? Just to let me know you've read it and maybe kinda liked it?


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